MatPat reveals the role Markiplier had in the 'Five Nights at Freddy's' movie before he had to back out

• Markiplier was supposed to be in the "Five Nights at Freddy's movie."
• But he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with his own movie "Iron Lung."

YouTuber MatPat revealed the part Markiplier was supposed to play in the "Five Nights at Freddy's movie" in a recent video.

Markiplier, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, has become known as the "King of FNAF" over the last decade because of the impact his streams playing the horror game had on the popularity of the franchise.

The games have been a staple of his YouTube career, and helped him amass 35 million subscribers.

Fans waited years to find out what character he might take on in the long-anticipated movie.

Like the game, it featured animatronic characters possessed by the souls of children who seek revenge on the evil genius who murdered them.

But they were left disappointed when Fischbach told them in a recent livestream that he had to back out due to scheduling conflicts with his own movie "Iron Lung."

In the stream, where he played the fan-made game "Fazbear Nights," Fischbach said he was going to "come clean" about something his fans had been asking about for some time.

"Unfortunately, I am not in the 'Five Nights at Freddy's' movie," he said.

He said there was no animosity with him or the creator Scott Cawthon — it was down to timing.

Unfortunately, Fischbach said, the two movies were being filmed "at the exact same time."

"Iron Long," which is also based on a horror game, does not have a release date yet, but is likely to be available late in 2023 or near the start of 2024.

"There was just so much that had to be done in the time," Fischbach said. "For 'Iron Lung' to be what it needed to be I had to dedicate everything into that project."

He said nobody had been "snubbed" and that the situation was amicable. He was so coy about bringing it up, he said, because he had hoped there was a way he could have made it work.

"It was one of those things where I had to make a call because I wouldn't expect them to compromise the quality of their project for me," he said. "And just in the same way, I would hope that they wouldn't expect me to compromise the project of my movie for them."

Though fans were disappointed, MatPat, whose real name is Matthew Patrick, let them know the part Fischbach was supposed to play.

At the beginning of a recent video on The Film Theorists channel, Patrick apologized to the community for keeping quiet about his own role in "Five Nights at Freddy's" — a waiter called Ness.

He said he finally met the game's creator Cawthon after "eight years of us dancing around each other," referring to Patrick's hundreds of theories about what the franchise means, and Cawthon's notorious secrecy.

He then revealed Fischbach was supposed to play a security guard.

He said he found this out while he was exploring the set, in true theorist fashion.

"It was actually there that I got to see who else was going to be a part of this movie up on the wall," he said. "It was also where I saw that good old Markiplier was supposed to be the security guard who gets killed at the very beginning of the movie."

Other YouTubers ended up in the "FNAF" movie: Dawko, 8-BitRyan, Baz, FusionZGamer, CoryxKenshin, and Razzbowski.

Though reviews of the movie have been mixed, the tenacity of "FNAF" fans remains strong, and its opening weekend over Halloween smashed box office records.

It brought in $80 million in North America and $132 million globally, according to Variety, making it a hit from its $20 million budget, and the biggest global horror opening of 2023.